Homemade Makeup Remover Cloths….Revisited…Again.

Since there has been so much(p)interest in my original posts about this idea (post #1, post #2), and I have actually made a few changesmyself…I thought it might be time for another update on the homemade makeup remover cloths.

Effective but messy.

A few people have expressed concern about using PAPER TOWELS on your face. Personally I don’t have a problem with it, I mean it’s not like I’m taking using a brillo pad, it’s a paper towel. However, that being said, I can see their point and while I don’t feel like the paper towel was hurting my skin, it was a bit too dry for my 40-something skin. ;-) So tried a few different things, including this messy failure…where I heated up some lotion in a small bowl and added it to my batch of makeup remover paper towels. I got the desired moisturizing effect….but it was a pretty messy proposition. The paper towels couldn’t quite hold up to the addition of the lotion.

Soooo….the constantly spinning wheels in my head started spinning faster and I came up withmy newest version of the homemade makeup remover cloths. I’d recently purchased a box of baby wipesfor another homemade product I’m experimenting with. (We are out of the baby wipes stage in our house…but I bought them pretty much straight for 10 years when my kids were little. That’s a lot of baby wipes!)
I decided that the THICKER, SOFTER, baby wipes might be just the ticket. While more expensive that paper towels, they are still MUCHless expensive than the makeup remover towelettes that are sold.I even did a little grocery store sleuthing with my camera phone this morning and have photographic evidence!

I realize this is far from a scientific analysis…but who cares. If my calculations are correct (and that’s always a possibility since Math never has been a strong suit of my left-handed, right-brained personality type….but I think I’m in the ballpark here.) this is what it boils down to:

$6.49 median price for 30 “makeup remover towelettes”

$2.35 median price for 64 “baby wipes”

OK…enough numbers crunching. What I have been doing lately is taking a baby wipe and adding a squirt of lotion and taking my makeup off with that. It’s actually beenthe perfect solution…..for me!Now I realize this takes some of the “homemade” out of homemade makeup remover cloths and is no longer an all natural alternative. But I actually started this whole thing because I was disgusted at the COST of the towelettes in the store….not necessarily because of the ingredients.

That being said, I think my next step in this process will be to switch to reusable cloths and go back to the original “recipe” of natural ingredients with the addition of some lotion. I am actually working towards going paperlessin our home. (NO, I will not be doing away with TOILET paper….that is just NOT going to happen!)I’m actually pretty close. We’re still using up our stock pile of paper towels (and of course the makeup remover/baby wipes), but we haven’t used dryer sheets in a LONG time and I’ve been sewing some cute cloth napkins lately to replace the paper ones.

If you are looking it at from pure financial view, then baby wipes are great alternative. Plus there are almost always coupons in the weekly paper. It is a little more astringent then the other wipes I was using, but I have a great nightly moisturizer (your Simple Moisturizing Lotion), in the am just use a nice washcloth with hot water to rinse my face before applying my makeup.

I have several friends who make their own baby wipes. They buy plain cotton wipes and add their home-made solution and stuff the whole lot into a baby wipe container. You could always do the same thing but add your make-up remover solution instead! There are several vendors online and Babysrus carry the cotton wipes (and I’ve even seen bamboo!).